Objectives

• What is housebreaking?
• Prerequisite considerations
• How to make a housebreaking plan?

What is Housebreaking?

It is the process of teaching the dog to form appropriate behavioral habits within the home. However, it is contingent on the dog's needs being reasonably met by the caretaker.

Prerequisite Considerations

• Ethics
  • Cynopraxis
  • LIMA - Least INTRUSIVE!!
  • ABA
• Ethology
  • dog specific behavior
  • breed specific behavior
  • individual specific behavior
• Health
  • diet
  • water
  • UTI
  • parasites
  • other health problems
• Diagnosis
  • Undrstand WHY the dog is having a housebreaking "problem"
  • Combo of understanding ethology/health
• Attitude
  • can lead to submissive urination
  • supression of all behavior including good
• Management
  • Proper crate
    • size
    • chews
    • water
    • comfortable
    • placement
    • reasonable time within
  • leashes/tethers
  • gates
  • safe and reasonable teaching environment
• Leadership - SUPER IMPORTANT
  • Helps start the plan!
  • outside/pee pad schedule
  • play schedule
  • chew schedule
  • training schedule
  • resting areas
  • thoughtful affection
• Drive Balance
  • On the chart to stress the importance
  • Breed and individual specific activities

Make the Plan!

Why is this addressed before anxiety on the 5.0 chart?

• Many factors including the intrusiveness to the relationship caused by the dog not being housebroken contribute to anxiety... specifically separation anxiety.

• Much anxiety can be caused simply by the overuse of confinement itself and not necessarily separation from members of the family.

• Getting the dog out of confinement naturally allows the dog to have a lifestyle less likely to feed separation anxiety.

Use charts to help!

Examples:

• Housebreaking Printable Chart

• Housebreaking Live Documents

Housebreaking three phases

(This can be used in the clients home or even started in a in-kennel situation and followed through with when returned home)

Phase 1 (set up for success to teach what is right)

• Record all significant activities and behaviors (good and bad). Examples: feeding, crate time, play time, pee/poop, obedience training, chewing bones, sleep, etc..
  • You may have a client do this before a formal consult (It will likely show the patterns of all the bad behaviors)
  • Help create a model based off of leadership during a consultation.
• perfect practice makes perfect - Redirect all problem behaviors to appropriate alternatives.  Self rewarding behaviors are more likely to be repeated (good and bad).
  • chewing furniture/slippers
  • mouthing people
  • jumping on furniture
  • chasing and biting ankles, cats, etc..
  • pee/poop accidents guidelines
    • Outside every hour for 8 week old puppy
    • Also immediately after any nap, exciteable play, or "circling behavior"
    • Add about 15 minutes every week, but consider every puppy an individual
    • Pups can hold it longer while sleeping.
      • Keep pups close while in the crate
      • Consider setting an alarm during the night and slowly setting it later until the pup can hold it until the morning.
      • Feeding times are closely linked to bowel movements, consider feeding later at night if puppy needs to have a bowel movement before desired wake time.
      • Allowing puppies to "cry it out" in a crate does not work better for smooth housebreaking. It is unnatural way and has more side effects (stress = more accidents/sickness)
• the following day, attempt to "cut off" problem behaviors before they happen by providing proper alternative behaviors.
• Do not punish behaviors give ALTERNATIVE behaviors.  Dog would RATHER do the right (breed appropriate) behaviors if you set it up for them.
• Be sure to include in the plan kennel (or similar) time for when it isn't feasable for the owner to supervise at all.
• Have owner do this until they are certain that they have done their best to provide for all basic needs and find alternatives for the undesirable behaviors. "Max out" on progress to reduce the need for phase 2,

Phase 2 (set up for failure to teach what is wrong)

• Triple check that phase 1 was completed with a reasonable effort
• Suggest at least one month of a finished phase 1 plan before attempting phase 2
• Phase 2 may NOT BE NECESSARY for many dogs.  Use your judgement if what still needs to be addressed will lead to a less intusive relationship and better quality of life for the dog or if the desired outcome is superfluous and better off managed.
• Consider the age of the dog.  Dogs under 6 months of age benifit from longer phase 1 planning.

Punish ONE behavior at a time.

• Use "Act of God" techniques.  The dog should not relate the punishment to the presence of people or else the dog will associate the punishment with personal discipline instread of environmental consequence.  This can lead to the dog thinking is "OK" to do teh behavior when people are not present (related to dominance rules/first right to limited resource)
• Punish behaviors that could not be resolved through phase 1 alone.
• Use equipment that is reliable and appropriate

Why the ecollar is the best

• timing
• motivational
• adjustable
• works on all dogs
• motivation from the punishment must be equal to suppress the beahvior regardless of what form it comes from you might as well use the one that is most accurate. (citronella collar, loud noises (wont work on well bred dogs),

Scat mats are useful for special situations 

Be careful with things that the dog must do specific behavior to get rid of punishment (dog jumping on a bed) - scat mats good for this because it can be related to teh contact with the object

Once one behavior seems to be resolved for at least a reasonable amount of time (1-3 days) add a new behavior to punish to the plan but be prepared to punish any previously resolved behaviors for at least one month after last observed.

Examples 

• garbage picking
• show chewing
• counter surfing
• unresolved inappropriate peeing/pooping (use caution since this is rare with a good phase 1 plan, there may be an underlying issue to address)

Phase 3

Focus on out of sight once it has been at least one month of perfect behavior when supervised.

Go slowly (camera are helpful):

• out of room
• out of house
• slowly increase time away until reasonable time.
• troubleshoot as necessary (camera helpful)